


The Right Words

by Sherlaufeyson



Category: British Singers RPF, Eric Clapton (Musician), Rock Music RPF, The Beatles (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 22:50:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16396577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherlaufeyson/pseuds/Sherlaufeyson
Summary: Eric Clapton tries to adjust to George Harrison leaving to stay with Bob Dylan and The Band at Woodstock. circa 1968.





	The Right Words

**Author's Note:**

> I own only a guitar and pen; and the guitar is borrowed.
> 
> These are fictional depictions of real people. None of this happened. Please don't sue me.

Eric Clapton struggles to pick up and play the guitar when he’s alone. He really does. Something about having an audience fixes that. Without one, he gets too much in his head; second guessing every choice, every chord and turn. Is it too self indulgent to play twelve bars of triplets, or would that be where the crowd would roar?

Then he gets in his head about the fact that he’s got in his head and it’s an unendurable recursive spiral.

He throws the guitar down next to him on the bed and lets out a strangled growl of exasperation.

This is what he’s reduced to when he’s alone.

Well, not alone. Patti is downstairs. She’s pretty, and clearly into him, or at least his guitar playing. And George practically gave him a free pass.

He just doesn’t feel like it. And isn’t that just the worst. No sex, no rock’n’roll, and the half-empty bottle on his side-board is looking ever more tempting.

It’s the ennui that’s killing him, and he knows it.

Any number of friends he could call; they’d be at his door in a heartbeat. Townshend, Winwood. George would even come back if he actually asked him. But they didn’t do that, did they. 

He gets up and pours a generous measure of whisky into a tumbler that still has the stain of the last drink poured from it clinging to the bottom of the glass.

Taking a swig, he places the crystal back on the table and flops next to his guitar.

He places his hand over the comforting curve of the body and buries his face in the pillow, depriving himself of air for a precious few seconds.

Turning over, he brings the guitar closer, cradling it in his arms, the familiar weight gently pressing him into the mattress.

Idly, he wonders what George is up to. Would his plane have landed at JFK yet? Did Bob send a car? Probably. His Bobness would hardly drive down from Woodstock and risk the press getting wind that he wasn’t paralysed from that motorcycle accident.

He hears Patti downstairs again, making a little more noise than necessary, clearly intent on announcing her presence to their house guest. Eric really can’t be bothered to deal with her right now. He’d be expected to be charming, and make conversation, and really all he can manage right now is exactly what he’s doing. Breathing. 

He thinks of George jamming across the Atlantic and something constricts in his chest. Not jealousy, he doesn’t think. Sure, he’d love to be jamming with Robbie Robertson, and he knows someday he will get the opportunity. But it’s more the thought that Robbie is getting to jam with George. And surely _that’s_ the definition of selfishness. He gets George to himself more months in the year than not. Hell, he gets private sessions.

And that’s not really where he wants his mind to go at this moment.

Their last ‘private’ jam session.

There’s a slight possibility he fucked that up for good.

  


\------------------------------

  


It was only a couple of weeks ago, and he can’t be certain it wasn’t the catalyst for George’s sudden departure.

They’d gone for a drive as they quite often did. A nice picnic of some top quality scotch whisky and a few fat joints. A couple of acoustic guitars in the back and they’d found a secluded spot in a quiet park off a country road.

A few drinks in, and they’d started playing. Starting with some Carl Perkins as per usual, George picking sublimely and Eric strumming along, filling in with his own licks. He wasn’t sure if it was the whisky, the weed or something else, but there was a strange electricity in the air. Their legs were tangled together and when Eric started picking Elvis’ Can’t Help Falling in Love, George’s guitar picked it up immediately. 

George flashed him one of his brightest grins and Eric’s fingers fumbled. Eric kept singing, harmonising with George as they were so used to doing. Eric closed his eyes, and just listened to George’s playing, enjoying the sweet air and sweeter voice. After a few moments, he noticed the guitar had stopped and opened his eyes. George had moved closer to him on the picnic blanket and leaned in.

He couldn’t be…? He wouldn’t be about to…? Eric panicked and scrambled to stand up, nearly crushing his own guitar in the process. 

“Oh my god, look at the time!” He inwardly cringed but had no idea what to say or do. Was George going to…? Had he been about to…?

George had turned his back to him and was slowly packing up the picnic items. 

“George, I…” Eric tried to begin, but all words failed him.

“You don’t need to say anything, Eric.” George said softly.

Well, that was a pass, then. He didn’t have to say anything. With every passing second, Eric was wishing he could summon the courage to say _something_. Anything. Anything to make George turn and look at him. Anything to bring that smile back to his face. Anything to turn the clock back thirty seconds.

But maybe he’d imagined it?

No, it had happened just there. There was only one thing that George had been about to do. Hell, he’d been pulling the same move on birds he’d taken on picnics for the past ten years.

Oh Jesus Christ.

The ride back to the car was silent. 

Eric was hesitant, but really really wanting to somehow fix things that he felt he may have irrevocably fucked up.

“Thanks for the drive.” It sounded inane, even in his own ears.

“My pleasure,” George drawled back. He smiled, though it was more of a grim, bitter smile. Like the one he’d give reporters that were trying too hard to be friendly.

Eric hated seeing that expression directed at him.

He turned on the radio and they drove on in silence.

  


\------------------------------

  


So really, it was his fault that he was lying here, on his bed. _George’s bed_ , his mind corrected helpfully. Cradling his guitar, unable to play it, hiding from George’s wife, unable to play house with her, just wishing every second would pass faster so George would be back faster and he could fix things.

It really was farcical. George waiting on John and Paul to get their act together and deign to record their album; him waiting on George to get back from the USA, Patti waiting on him to get downstairs and eat breakfast, or lunch, or cocktails, or whatever the meal was that the current unknown time dictated. Everyone just wishing their lives away. Waiting.

He still had no fucking idea what he was going to say.

He thought of writing a tune. He was pretty good at that when the emotions were strong enough. Though these were almost too strong.

An anguished groan was only going to get you so far, even though Dylan seemed to turn it into an art form. 

He wouldn’t forget the seven minute mixtape of Dylan’s groaning that George had spliced together one rainy Tuesday afternoon.

Oh shit.

That’s why he’s gone to Woodstock.

How could he have been so fucking stupid? They’re a thing. Of course they’re a thing. The Quiet Beatle and the introverted poet; spokesman of a generation. 

Oh god, and what was he when compared with that?

He’d had to write a song once, from scratch, and couldn’t even do that alone and had enlisted George’s help.

Eric let out another frustrated groan and heard footsteps almost immediately on the creaky floorboards of the staircase.

Holding the guitar closer to himself and closing his eyes, he tried to feign sleep. Immediately, he was rudely awakened by sunlight flooding in the west facing windows. Well, that answered his question about the time of day.

He groaned pathetically and opened one eye.

George was looking down at him, raising an eyebrow.

“I really would have hoped you’d have got out of bed by now, lad,” he gently mocked.

Eric felt elation beyond anything in recent memory.

“Shuddup,” he heard himself slur as he discarded the guitar next to him and unfolded himself as gracefully as he could manage from the bed and into the arms of the man standing next to it.

George was strong. George was thin, but tall. And strong, and his arms wrapped tightly around the younger guitarist.

Eric nuzzled his face into George’s neck, surreptitiously inhaling the man’s scent.

“Are you… sniffing me?” George asked incredulously.

Maybe not so surreptitiously.

“Missed you,” Eric mumbled into George’s beard. He could feel George’s face breaking out into a grin against him.

“It’s been half a day!”

“Too long,” Eric grumbled, tightening his arms around George.

“Okay, then. I’m going to go and unpack since it seems like I’m staying –“

“No.” Eric emphatically cut him off, hooking a foot around the back of George’s ankle, effectively trapping him.

George pulled back from Eric’s face enough to see him properly. He didn’t mention his red-rimmed eyes, or the moisture he could see in their corners. He raised a hand to card through Eric’s hair, and Eric leaned back, still holding George, collapsing both of them onto the bed.

Eric thought maybe he didn’t need to have the right words. George always found them for him anyway.


End file.
